Artemis Fowl :The Secret of the Myth
by twinparadox
Summary: Artemis remembers the fairies with unintentional help from a bumbler of a psychologist (playing a minor role) .Please read and review this ! After this, he goes back to the Dark Ages and starts a new life there, will he ever survive this jaunt? rnPlease r
1. Default Chapter

Artemis Fowl : The Secret of the Myth

In Which She Appears

St Bartleby's School For Young Gentlemen

He had had enough ,dealing with an incurable pack of madmen , every day .Having to be patient when people absolutely refused to talk and drenched his grandfather's 'authentic Victorian' chair in tears and littering his so ,so lovely carpet in used tissues or even worse ,trying to tell him that totally authentic ,very genuine Victorian chair was ,would one believe it ,fake !

No ,no .Too much ,much too much even for the brilliant psychologist ,Dr Po ,Phd ,he was

leaving ,never mind how much St Bartleby's House of Hoodlums needed him .He ,was off .

Sabrina Wilkinson fitted the bill of your everyday ,fresh-out –school-graduate to a T. She was in her early twenties ,(still) extremely gung-ho and bright-eyed and bushy-tailed about her first job .Apart from that ,she was pale with freckles on her nose ,had an enormous collection of over fifty pairs of coloured contact lenses (her favourite being the purple) ,had hair that changed colour every month or so ,thanks to Loreal hair dye (she was currently using blonde) ,and most peculiarly ,her new posting was as a psychologist at St Bartleby's .

**The first counselling session of the year for Artemis Fowl**

** '**Artemis! Look at me, please. I thought you had already signed our 'Friendship Contract here,' Sabrina paused and fumbled with the five-inch high binder ,finally pulling out a piece of paper which said :Friendship Contract .It had been photocopied out of the latest child psychology book written by Dr F. Roy Dean Schlippe so as far as Sabrina could see ,there was absolutely no reason why it did not work on Artemis ,not to mention what else she had tried so far .She had attempted to get 'pal-ly' with him ,telling him to call her 'Breenie' ,then trying to make him laugh by telling antique knock-knock jokes(she did get him to laugh in the end --- by spilling coffee all over herself ) ,after that she embarked on her life story for a full four hours until she realized that Artemis had not said a word .

Artemis was bored ,Sabrina ,the inane quack ,was the one who needed a psychological assessment ,not him ,and as for that 'Friendship Contract' ,he could have told her himself that it would not work ,as he was Dr F. Roy Dean Schlippe and had wrote that rag as a big joke on the world(and of course ,to earn even more money) .He looked at the paper that Sabrina had thrust at him when the bell rang ,the counselling session was done for the day .


	2. Secrets Are Unraveled

Secrets Are Unraveled

It was late in the night already. Artemis sat crouched under his bedcovers. Insomnia was not a problem that plagued him until the beginning of that school term. It was one of those problems that had, until recently, bothered only other people, and it was beginning to worry him. He had tried to explain it all away to himself, attributing it to his criminal-minded character, certainly it was usual for a person such as himself to stay up, all the way into the wee hours of the morning, but he knew it was not true. Then he lied to himself that it was the food at St Bartleby's, but the little nagging voice in his mind waved it away, and much to his chagrin, he had to admit it was not that either after he had written back home for 'food fit for human consumption'. There was also that aforementioned little voice, this mysterious entity had simply barged into his mind the morning he found the 'plastic lenses' in his eyes. It was conscience, the annoyingly saintly side of himself which stuck to him like an oil-slick n a sea. And last, last but not least was an inexplicable grief that was constantly shadowing him. It was an unfathomable lost memory of a friend, whom he had never yet always known, a friend who was now irrevocably dead.

Artemis furrowed his brow, plumbing ever deeper into the depths of old remembrances, trying, as hard as he could to place that feeling, as he did this, he cursed Sabrina. '_Thorn in my side she is…….'And_ with that, he fell into a fitful sleep.

Now, before you begin pitying Artemis, let me tell you that Sabrina was having a far worse time. She was already teetering on the edge of insanity, the next day would be the next counselling session with Artemis and she still could not find the book. She was pondering furiously on how her things always chose to take French leave just when she needed them most as she dug through her landfill of a room with a rake that the 'friendly and helpful' gardener had so unwillingly lent her.

'Tick tock' the cursed clock triumphantly (to a very frazzled Sabrina) announced the passing of the fourth hour of the morning. She took a deep breath in preparation to let fly a string of swearwords, but stopped short, _Aha!, _the book (of fairy tales meant to inculcate moral values to children) had suddenly returned from it's vacation.

**The next day**

Sabrina took a deep breath, not to let fly another string of swearwords, but instead, to brace herself in opening the door which separated heaven from hell in the form of. a ghostly pale, very sardonic, very sadistic boy.

After a few false starts where she had tiny panic attacks. She finally managed to open the door of her office.

'Oh it's you Artemis, come in, come in.'

Artemis merely smiled. He had decided, after a recent, very pained letter from his mother ,that he would spare the hapless psychologist from further stress.

'Hello, it's good to see you Miss. I'd like to apologise for what happened last week.' Despite being so outwardly civil, he wished heartily that he could throttle the sanctimonious woman, especially when she began cooing exclamations of saccharine sweet forgiveness.

Artemis continued upon the jolly, apologetic façade he had coined the distinguishing behaviour of sentimental idiots whom he would'nt be seen dead with all through the session of Sabrina's idle prattle on relationships and morals and suchlike. Until Sabrina pulled out a brightly illustrated 'Big Book of Educational Fairy Stories for all ages to read and enjoy', then, something in him snapped. No, not the his patience, but the invisible walls set up in his mind when he had his memory wiped. The lies which held back the wellsprings of humanity and dammed up the old memories of friendship ,the real treasure that Holly, Root, Mulch and even Foaly had given him. The moment he read the word 'Fairies', those walls simply shattered and the truth, the dazzling, beautiful truth came rushing back to him. He was, to quote poet Emily Dickinson , struck 'blind' by the truth. Temporarily. He was shaken out of his state of shock when Sabrina spoke, 'Like it?'

'Oh…what…yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely.' Artemis, still stunned, choked out the words, not quite knowing what he was talking about.

'Good then. Now, I would really appreciate it if you were to read this and discuss it with me during the next session we have.'

Artemis was now fully lucid, 'Oh, certainly.'

And he found himself outside the office with the book in his arms as Sabrina closed the door. Besides that, he now had a goal, and that was to find the fairies again whether they liked it or not .


	3. Life Goes On Down Under: The Haven

And Life Goes On Down Under: The Haven

It was another typical day at work again, one could say, if work at LEPrecon could be regarded as ordinary in the first place, especially while being known as 'the crazy girly captain' to the general population. There were also other rather cumbersome things to deal with, such as the 'coronary-waiting-to-happen' a.k.a Commander Root, smartass centaur Foaly and her various male colleagues who spent more time hitting on her rather than following orders. In fact, Holly had just escaped a very _nerve-shattering, blood-boiling _encounter with our very favourite green-skinned Casanova, Chix Verbil. Ever since that now famous 'chamber-pod-incident', he was even further convinced that Holly was absolutely _enamoured_with him (never mind the broken wing) and was even _more _annoyingly persistent in his efforts to get her to 'admit how (she) liked (him)'.

Besides all this and the occasional lambasting by a particularly enraged Root, life as a recon officer was better than ever. Since the Haven had gotten it's affairs back in order (just recently may I add), the Council had finally agreed to give Foaly a raise in his 'much needed' funding, and also bought new equipment (to the relieved cheers and whoops of the recon officers, Holly not the least) for the LEPrecon unit.

As Holly walked to her cubicle, she scanned her chocked-full schedule for the month, she was feeling a slight bit, well _unsparky_ , as fairies put it when they had been putting off the Ritual for quite some time already. Despite usually resentful of desk assignments, she was pretty glad there had'nt been many above ground Recon jobs of late, she would hate to repeat that disastrous Troll-in-Italian –Restaurant experience again, --but Hey!! was'nt she forgetting?That was the same night on which she had first met Artemis!! And if anyone asked whom she would have most dearly desired to meet once a again, she would have answered without a moment's hesitation "Artemis Fowl".

Foaly, on the other hand, was not short of time in any way, in fact, quite the opposite (to his abject delight and an extremely fired-up Commander Root's chagrin). And just as he had so promised Holly that fateful night they erased themselves from Artemis's life; he was then lounging in front of the computer clicking through the boy's memories, trying to understand (in his most distinctly _centaurian_way) the inexorable genius's mind. As he watched the phosphorent green Gnommish symbols flash across the glowing monitor of his computer, he began to feel, as Holly was then, far guiltier beyond the description of mud-men and centaurs alike. Holly's words on the night of the fateful mind-wipe seemed to play back to him with clarity that surpassed that of any tape-recorder in the whole of the Lower Elements; "he'll go back to what he was before, and we'll be to blame". She was right, they, the fairies whom had imparted to Artemis, a sense of right and wrong and the gift to make a livable existence, were the same ones to take it away. It was bitterly ironic.

Foaly raised an eyebrow at his uncharacteristic elvishness, he was getting too emotional, time to get out his trusty centaur's handbook. And so the shadow of guilt passed over him as if a fresh gust of wind had blown by from the surface and blown that overhanging cloud of murk away.

"WHAT!!!" A shout which sent the whole LEP building reverberating echoed from (no prizes for guessing) Commander Root's office, sending all the unfortunate staff members scuttling away, convinced that they would be deafened for life.

"Whoa! Ole Beetroot sure is fired up now!"

"Ah, sure's sure somebody gonna get it from him alrigh'd."

Such went a conversation between a sprite known as Chix Verbil and his other bewinged and equally moronic colleague. But yes, (gasps all around everybody) they were right, Root was unsurpassingly 'fired up' and some unfortunate being was 'gonna get it from him'. That person was a prison gnome working in the Arctic Circle, Mulch Diggums, notoriously kleptomaniac dwarf, had escaped.

"D'Arvit! All that effort wasted! You, blasted idiot of a hairy gnome,_ were supposed to KEEP---HIM---IN---JAIL!!!"_

"B-b-but, b-but h-he j-just esc-caped w-when I w-was'nt l-looking-g."

"WHAT DID YOU EXPECT THAT SCOUNDREL TO DO, STAY PUT? OUT!! OUT,DAMMIT!!!"

"Y-y-yes S-sir." And the gnome, trembling from head to foot, scrambled out with a distinct sense of rubbery knees. Getting shouted at immediately after returning from the North Pole was not pleasant, not pleasant at all.

Right at that point of time though, unbeknownst to all and sundry, was the infamous Mulch Diggums, burrowing through the deliciously rich soil right above Root's office.

"Jeezus, I wonder what's gotten to old Julius this time?" He said in between bites, as he chewed his way to Ireland, he had to find Artemis.

The soil down there was Grade A Star, the way dwarven gourmet places put it, good chewy, earthy clay. Down in the depths of the Lower Elements, one did'nt come by annoying bits of gristle from graveyards anymore, and the soil was beautifully moist, like one of those Angel Fudge Cakes, the only thing the Mud People had that was better than whatever the fairies made.

Mmm, especially after that jaw-breaking Arctic permafrost, this was the best home-coming Mulch could have had ever.

The day was at it's end again, the waning light of the golden dusk diminished, fading into a nondescript twilight blue as the shades of evening drew on. Holly was but a faintly shimmering patch upon the darkling horizon where the skies seemed to open up and extend to the infinite heavens beyond. She had her shield on and hovered gently above the lands upon which the shadows of the approaching night extended. She was helping Foaly test a new prototype for wing design, his ego still had not quite recovered from the thrashing it had suffered during the goblin rebellion. "Hey, looks pretty much like a blue rinse does'nt it?" came the centaur's hushed voice through the built-in speaker in her helmet, centaurs, not being able to perform magic, had'nt been allowed on the surface for centuries and opportunities to see the earth were few and far between.

"Yeah…you remember, that time we did it over the Fowl Manor?" Holly replied huskily after a moment's hesitation, all the while thanking Frond's Kingdom that her friend was'nt able to see the wetness the memory had glazed over her eyes.

"Sure do. I know exactly what you're feeling now, don't think that I'm that insensitive. Anyway, we're all missing him, not just you but no one else is exactly blubbering over it like you are."

"Foaly!" Holly, despite her internal turmoil at that moment, an insult when she heard it and made a mental note to scorch the words: 'I, Foaly the centaur, am an ass. Kick me.' On Foaly's hairy behind the moment she got back to the office with her Neutrino Laser. The centaur, despite having claimed to be not 'that insensitive', was still the most obnoxious creature in the whole of the Lower Elements.

"Alright, alright since you can't even take a joke…"

"Foaly! I'm warning you, when I get back…"

"O.K, I surrender! White flag, calm down already! Just fly around and tell me how it is."

So she did, she warmed up the miniscule motor which basically looked like a glass box on chain which hung on a chain round her neck, the wings, illuminated in the pearly incandescence of the waxing moon, fluttered to life, a whirring, quick-silvery fan, with that, she zoomed off, light, free and airy over the darkened world to the Ring of Tara.


	4. Gone With The Wind

Gone With The Wind

  The afternoon sky had turned an ominous shade of dirty brown, like old glass of an abandoned house, backlit with a faint, flickery candle-flame. Ragged, dusty clouds rolled and churned like dirtied cotton balls, floating and drifting, murderous sheep roaming round a wasteland obscuring an already tawny, fading sun. The surface of the river below rippled as murky tea would in a teacup left upon a windy balcony, a shadowy dirt-hued skin of mud fringed with a pallid grey foam. Such was the dull, dreary, landscape which hung, with the oppressive presence of a watching eye, framed with a metal window frame in Artemis's dormitory. There was a slender, slight silhouette of a fifteen year old, features hidden within the folds of darkness within the otherwise deserted dormitory.

  Artemis was skipping class again, it was something he readily admitted to himself as it did'nt much matter whether or not he attended, to him, just about everything was obsolete. He often spent times such as this in the quiet, lone solace of his dormitory, there was a peace which came quite easily to him within the stillness of the empty room. He was'nt planning heists and scams and other crimes _all_ the time, like most people, Artemis, whom often seemed to defy all natural laws, had his moments. He was gazing, eyes fixed on something hidden to the rest of the world, far, far out on the brink of the greying horizon a storm was brewing, in more ways than one.

**Three hours later**

  The hurricane alarms had been sounded and all order had been hitherto forgotten amidst the ensuing consternation. It was strange, so strange that a cyclone could rise out like a terrifying, deadly column of black wind from the lake itself, undetected by any of the building's sensors until it was within a minute from the school. All students had been herded out of their classrooms once the tenebrous swirling mass was seen by a sharp-eyed janitor and were all stampeding (with numerous wails of : "We're gonna die, I tell ya'", most of which came from the self-professed 'jocks') towards the building's underground hurricane shelter. Of course, Artemis, whom had ill-fatedly (or perhaps the opposite) chosen to cut classes that day, was not among the screaming masses.

  Artemis could already feel the approach of the oncoming hurricane, the coldness of the lake-water spray, the cutting, frost-knife edge of the swirling wind, he could feel the wintry touch of the rogue gales beginning to tug at him, raise goose-pimples from his flesh and carve its cruel, dead fingernails into his warm, living heart. Peculiarly, Artemis was not the slightest bit afraid, he knew for sure that death would be inevitable whenever it came, so why not then? It was as good a time as any. Then, before he was able to continue his highly insightful internal debate, the cyclone, as big, black and deadly as life crashed through the stone walls of the dormitory block and took Artemis with it, leaving the rather more unfortunate dormitory building as flat and grey as the St Bartleby's cafeteria pancake.

  Now, as you, my _dear_, _dear_ intelligent readers, you might have guessed by now that the cyclone was no ordinary cyclone (even the St Bartleby's school staff called it a 'freak incident'), rather she, (cyclone Venus she was soon to be christened) was created by, (yup, you guessed it) an unsatisfied fairy going by the not unfamiliar name of Opal Koboi.

  "So, just how did our _darling_ Miss Koboi get out of prison (Howler's Peak, to be exact)?" you might all hasten to question me. Well, it's a long story that I am afraid I shall have to tell all whom have not been reading the newspapers in the Haven I suppose, and it all starts here.

**Opal Koboi's side of the tale**

  We all know (presumably) that the story of our very favourite deranged, Cat-Pixie did not end with Holly punching her between the eyes and her resulting descent into unconsciousness, in fact, that was just the beginning.

  She groaned, the throbbing pain in her forehead came back as she awakened in a small, noisy cell amidst the squalour of the infamous goblin prison. _Where was she?_ That was the first thought which popped up in her brain that was just beginning to come (with an excruciating, pulsing pain), whirring back to consciousness. As she slowly eased open her originally scrunched-up eyelids, a hissing, lisping and terrifyingly reptilian voice came from above her (adding to her already unbearable pain), "Welcum back……ya bedda' wach' ch'oud, trai'dor."

  'What a patently ridiculous thing to say, absolutely philistine,' came the first thought in her sore head, then all of a sudden, it hit her, both ways, full in the face. With a groan, more of weary expectation rather than the actual pain, she passed out again as Phylene, one of her goblin generals, punched her still woozy head. Reality hurt……Ouch.

  With even more pain than the previous time (if such a thing were possible), Opal woke up, this time to the sound of Phylene denying adamantly that he had any blame for her present condition to the truculent warder gnome.

  "I th'wear, I'd wa'thent me, I din'd even touch her."

  "Oh, ve'ery funny. If you did'nt touch her, then tell me, who did, the wall? There ain't anyone in this cell 'sides you an' the girlie over there."

  "But it wa'thent me! It wa'thent!"

  "Jolly good liar ya'll make Mister."

  "Really? You really think th'o ?"

  "No, I don't. An' I think while ya brush up 'em lyin' skillz o' yo's ya better keep a clean record there."

  "No, no! It wa'thent, I th'wear……"

  At that point, Opal was already thoroughly compelled to sit up and give them both a lecture on proper pronounciation skills and grammar but then decided against it for her own personal safety.

  After that first encounter with Phylene, she never had much trouble with him anymore (thanks to the warder), he was far too busy practicing lying (without much success), but besides him, there were still other exceedingly fuming mad goblins roaming round the prison, and unfortunately, the very unempathetic prison officers had seen fit to introduce another goblin inmate, Hypre, an extremely hyper ex-general of hers. Fortunately (for her) and unfortunately (for the appropriately named Hypre), she was prepared. When he tried to blow a "Killer Flame-Thrower" at her, she sprayed her clandestinely smuggled, highly flammable Christian Dior _Eau De Parfum _at him while the fireball was still coming down a nostril where the ball of flame promptly exploded his nose, littering the place with bits and pieces of snot encrusted goblin-nose. Another thing that was going for her then was Phylene, whom was still practicing lying, and he jumped at the chance to "brush up 'em lyin' skillz" and proudly proclaimed to have blown up Hypre's nose.

  Thus, with _both_ goblins out of the picture and the rest of the revenge-seeking idiots safely locked away in separate cells, Opal's mind was free to roam where it would, and she quickly planned out a fool-proof escape.

Want to know more? Well, stay tuned folks! It's coming up right next!


	5. Escape!

Escape!

**Night, two years ago, Howler's Peak**

It was pitch black outside, save for a vague outline, slightly darker than the wide expanse of tenebrous, charcoal coloured sky which seemed then, to rise like an impenetrable curtain of night from the stony unilluminated horizon. There seemed to be a ceiling of black, with tiny pin-pricks of faraway stars stretching over the earth, shrouding it in an inexplicably bleak, lightless shade.

  Opal Koboi was perched rather precariously upon a stone parapet of Howler's Peak prison, which was itself constructed on a frigid mountaintop. She stared out at the dark, barren landscape through a pair of night-vision goggles constructed of bits of glass, metal and plasma, she could see everything in full colour, yet, things seemed clearer when they were hidden in the obscuration of the night.

  As she scanned the panoramic, sweeping view of the mountains and country for miles around, she could hear the loud snoring of the sleeping goblin inmates. Opal could'nt say she was sorry to leave them, in fact, more than happy. They were neither clever enough to make intelligent conversation with, nor stupid enough to make obedient lackeys or at least stay safely out of her way. She was fingering a rope made crudely of coarse prison bed sheets she had clandestinely stolen from the laundry piles each week when they went to the washing room to do their laundry, she could feel a slight, prickling annoyance, _Opal Koboi, the great female genius, sneaking out of prison like a mere _mortal, _with a rope, to her eternal shame._ Opal had expected more of herself, she always had, yet always fell short, but dawn was approaching in five hours and she would need at least that much time to abseil down the smooth, moss covered, age-worn side of the tower.

  Throwing back a last, disparaging glance at the sleeping goblins, she dug into her pocket, got out a pocket laser and proceeded to melt the iron bars on the jail windows, cast down her rope and clambered out, into the night.

  Outside, the vertical side of the prison spire was dew-carpeted and slipperier than she had initially expected, but never one to falter, she gritted her tiny, sharp pixie teeth, grasped the rope tightly, planted both feet against the wall and began scaling down the steep stone building.

  Slowly and steadily, Opal descended the tower with perfect precision as the earth continued to turn, soon, the sun began to rise and the prison bells clanged just as she reached the ground, landing lightly on the cold, winter hardened soil. Then, as the prison began to stir with the dawning of a new day, Opal cut the rope off where it was tied to the twisted remnants of the prison grate, gathered it as it fell in a neat brown coil at her feet, and disappeared over the side of the mountain.

  Though Opal had never been to prison before, this mountain was not completely alien to her, she knew it by the back of her hand, in fact, she _owned _the mountain and the land around it under the name of Gracie Mctiftin, known throughout the Haven as an eccentric pixie artist. She had built a laboratory wholly separate from Koboi Laboratories, aptly named Plan B Labs, and that was exactly where she was headed.

  Despite her surface self-assurance, Opal knew that there would inevitably come a time when, either through a slip-up of her own, an underground business deal gone sour or just plain bad luck, she would be caught and sent to prison. Now, though even she had no way to predicy future events, she was determined not to be left high and totally dry, so from the moment she could expand her business enough to begin commanding a sufficient income, she started the construction of her second fortress, albeit without any dwarf contractor by the name of Mulch Diggums. Though Opal prided herself on never using colloquialisms, ever, she knew, as soon as she stepped into Plan B Labs, that she was home-free.

  The lab was a sprawling underground hall, it was built rather like a medieval church, with thick, grey stone walls from which hung huge paintings from King Frond's time (all illegally bought, obviously). Overhead, the ceiling, in which was inlaid with a jewel-tile mosaic of Frond's vanished Kingdom, loomed. It was fitted with never-before-seen technology, by her of course, to rain showers of 'blue-rinse material' which would vapourise after doing its job, onto any intruders. It was Opal's Haven really, a place which she could lord over, control with a click of the remote, _and there were no rules to follow_.

  She turned, slowly, "I'm back. Now's for revenge, People!"


	6. Blown Away

Blown Away

  "Aghh… Oh, Gods, my head hurts……what hap…pened…?" Artemis clutched his aching forehead and squeezed his eyes shut in a futile effort to keep out the bright light blazing down at him. His sore head felt as if a thousand iron-shoed stallions were galloping through it and there seemed huge patches of missing memories from his jumbled up mind, the last thing he could remember was being hit by a hurricane spinning at near six hundred miles per hour in the dim, shadow shrouded school dormitory. And well, now, this glaring, piercing effulgence? It just didn't seem to fit in, how, how could it be?

  Just then, as Artemis was deep in thought (well, as deep as possible if one can practically feel his brain throbbing within his skull that is), his train of thought was suddenly interrupted as a soft, oddly accented voice came down at him. "Ah, lad there, why is thou lain upon thy ground? Wouldst thou require my assistance? Come, come , I shall bring you back to thy village, 'tis but a short way."

  Then, two soft, yet work roughened hands slipped behind Artemis's neck and knees and carried him up. He was even more confused, the mellow yet firm voice was speaking archaic speech, and besides, there was no village near St. Bartleby's, not for hundreds of miles around, but he was just too relieved at being taken out of the blazing sunlight to resist the voice and let himself be carried off.

**The Village**

  When Artemis awoke again, he was lying on soft loft bed of sweet-smelling straw and he could feel a cool, water-soaked rag on his forehead where the pain was fast subsiding. He got ready to furl his eyelids tightly again when he found that the room hidden from the light but for a weak yellow beam emanating from a candle, tall, cool and white, like a marble pillar with a spray of bright gems atop it.

  "Thou is awake and better now, I presume." There came the voice again from the other side of the room. Artemis turned and opened his eyes a crack, then slowly lifting his lids up to take in a full view of this strange, strange place. The room was shrouded in a quiet calm within the darkness, at the far left, lit with gentle light streaming in through a small, round window, was rows and rows of neat flasks, filled with a rainbow of different, wonderously hued bubbling liquids, some blushing warms shades of roseate sunsets, others seemingly containing fluid jewels and still others glowing gold and mercury silver. But what most caught Artemis's eye was the slender, black silhouette amongst the flasks and bottles. The shape was slight, lithe and looked barely more than a boy little older than him.

  "Who are you?" Artemis asked in a desperate bid to dispel the curtain o f confusion that had descended over him.

  "Ah, I see thou art a slight bit disorientated. My name is Edgar Knight, apprentice to thy Alchemist Alaric Morlan. I came by thou as I was out to fetch water from thy well yonder, thou was lying upon the road and delirious with fever. I brought you back here, two days and two nights have passed since. I trust thou is feeling better now."

  "What is the year, may I know?" Artemis asked.

  "Why, 'tis the year 1440 since the birth of Our Lord." Edgar answered quickly.

  Then it hit Artemis, he had traveled back in time---- all the way to the Middle Ages.

More is coming soon, thanks  J


	7. Acquaintances With Reality

Acquaintances With Reality

  "Oh? Pray, do tell, why doth thou ask this? Doth thou not know even this?" Edgar inquired, with a hint of polite confusion in his voice.

  "No, no. I was just a bit, a bit……" Artemis faltered then, still unsure of what to say.

  "Hath thou forgotten?" He pressed, the nonplussed tone becoming infused with true concern.

  "Not at all, not at all like that! I was just in a bit of a daze then." Artemis quickly covered up any cause for suspicion. Edgar, with a swish of fabric and muffled thumps

strode over to Artemis's side of the room, "Ah, I see thou is a bit befuddled, no matter, Master will know what to do when he comes back.

  Now that Edgar had come closer, Artemis could see him clearly, he was around sixteen, with a clear, pale countenance and sharp, distinct features on an oval face reminiscent of a Medieval Era portrait of an unknown subject he had once seen and tried to steal (unsuccessfully) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His walnut brown hair was cut in a neat pageboy haircut and his grey eyes, so much like the calm, softly glimmering lake outside Fowl Manor when shone upon by the gloriously ethereal moonrise, betrayed an intellect and wisdom far beyond the counting of mortal years which lay shrouded behind this mask of innocent youth, now reflected a ponderous look of confoundedness. Then he sighed after scrutinizing Artemis for a moment, which, to the latter, seemed to last an eternity, then sighed heavily and sat down on the table next to the bed, after which the both of them waited in silence, each lost in his own thoughts for The Alchemist to come home.

  It was getting dark outside, the clouds which had been painted countless hues of crimson and heliotrope, vermillion and violet, ruby and lavender had been washed away with the eventual fading of the evening sun. The beatific afterglow was gone, as memories of the past are often apt to be and the shadows had covered the once gold-gilded empyrean. The full moon was rising, glowing in all her luminous mercury pallidity in her monthly ritual ,so immeasurably mysterious.

  'The sun will rise yet again upon the morrow, yet this day that hath passed creation by, no man shall evermore bear witness.' The Alchemist thought, contemplating the blue that lay above. The Alchemist was not a man held in very high opinion by fellow villagers, he lived at the very end of the long line of houses, keeping to himself, not even encouraging his apprentice to socialize with the villagers. In fact, Edgar became his apprentice only by chance when the hands of Fate, an unutterably unpredictable player in the lives mortals, had dealt them corresponding cards, coming to him some twelve years ago, a stranger, an orphan whom no one else would accept, and that, made Alaric Morlan, the last of the men whom had yet retained the fairy's knowledge of Alchemy, all the odder.

  He stepped briskly up the dusty path to the house of wood and stone, opened the door and entered with a rustling of his long traveling cloak.

  "Master, forgive me for my rashness, if any, this afternoon I found a stranger lying along the roadside while I was fetching water and I----"

  The Alchemist held up his hand, stemming the flow of conversation from his apprentice, Edgar had said enough, "Where is thy stranger thou speaks of?"

  "Up in the attic on my bed Master, I apologise if I have done wrong." Edgar said hastily, beginning to look rather alarmed.

  "No, no wrong hath been done, I want to attend to him." The Alchemist said, climbing up the ladder leading to the loft.

  Artemis could hear both Edgar's light, quick footfalls accompanying the Alchemist's steady, surer and more decided footsteps up to where he lay, still dizzy, disorientated and tensed into a what he thought must have been a good position to jump up and bolt straight out, whatever he knew of Medieval England did not paint a terribly cosy picture of the –people.

  Slowly, Artemis could see Edgar's dark-haired head emerge, out from the square hole in the attic floor, then the Alchemist's goldenrod hued one, both casting large, round, grey shadows on the dim wall of the loft by the faint, flickering flame which sprouted like a flower of a pale, blazing quality from the slim, white candle Edgar held.

  "Thou art not unwell, my good guest?" The Alchemist called as he stepped up gracefully, panther-like as his apprentice, still holding the candle, clambered in as well as he could.

  Artemis thought for awhile first, then answered, "Yes, I am suitably rested, thanks be to your competent apprentice."

  He could see the Alchemist's wise, noble features raise in a twinkling smile of amusement. "This clumsy fool of a boy here? Competent, thou doth say, aye, I never came to know of this."

  Artemis could hear a hint of laughter in his voice, not mean, but in fact brimming with affection towards his 'clumsy fool' of an apprentice, and relaxed.

  "Hath thou a place to stay? I can offer thou lodging if thou hath not a place to go, that is how Edgar here and I crossed paths." The Alchemist smiled to himself, Fate had left him yet another lesson.

  "No sir. My thanks to you, for your kindness… …" But the Alchemist had already left the room, following him, Edgar.


	8. In Present Time

In Present Time

**Plan B Laboratories**

 Now, dear reader, I should expect you found the coming of the hurricane (that blew Master Fowl and yours truly all the way back to the middle Ages) very bizarre. Well, it has an explanation, one that I managed to squeeze from an LEP operative just this morning, and the story, it seems, narrates as such…

  This hurricane was no invention of Opal Koboi's, sent fresh from Plan B Labs to St. Bartleby's to send Artemis on a little jaunt to the Middle Ages, it was, in fact, an ancient spell from a book she happened to come by, most innocently (as innocent as a half-crazed megalomaniac She-Devil could get), during her child-hood on a holiday to a Celtic village. Opal didn't even know it's after-effects fully as the rest of the page that went beyond 'creating a gust of wind to blow one's enemies away so far…' had been covered in age-old, crusty, blackened Mud Man's blood (fairy blood never degenerated).

  So when she watched, from the comfort of the Lab, the video sent back from an ultra-light, reflective-foil wrapped, flying camera which was dispatched along with the newly created hurricane, the results were very satisfactory. To her (but we all know what happened) Artemis Fowl had been effectively wiped from the face of the earth.

One down, seven to go until revenge was complete.

**Fowl Manor**

  Mrs Fowl was seated in front of the television again, bored, as always. This was most unexpected, least of all by Angeline herself, especially while her dearest husband was still recuperating in hospital. Everything had been all light and sweetness then. There were promises, from her Timmy to go about business legally, and then from Arty to stop his crime spree and go back to being the nice, manageable, agreeable schoolboy son she had never known. And then yes, they were kept, but like things she saw through sparkling shop windows, they lost their shine once she viewed them through the eyes of an owner. The future that had turned into the present had lost that rosy, romantic light in which she used to see them.

  Her husband was out day and night, he was turning into a strait-laced workaholic, and a very dull companion, there was no Artemis to worry about either, he was at school, far, far away, and his letters had been dwindling steadily.

  Her life, she had concluded, was an absolute misery.

  Then the phone rang, the jarring, shattering song of the antiquated contraption wrapped in age-dulled Mother-of-Pearl, so much like a faded lily, yesterday's moonlight, an old woman whose beauty was now gone, swelled up like an invisible, glassy wave, filling the empty, soundless sitting room with a certain profusion of decadence and horror of age that hungered for more to eat and eat away.

  She couldn't hear the lovers in the soap opera speak anymore though their faces curved into increasingly sappy, soppy and overwhelmingly idealistic smiles. Her brow twitched in annoyance, she leant to the side to pull out the phone wire but then stopped, _what__ if it were Timmy?_

 _Eastenders__ can wait._

  She picked up the phone in happy anticipation and waited for her husband's voice to flood through the earpiece from wherever he happened to be, into Fowl manor, illuminating the darkness within.

  The actual situation could not be more different.

  "Mrs Fowl," A nervous, unfamiliar voice came through, "I have some bad news for you."

  Angeline was dumbfounded, _what could have gone wrong now?_

  "Madam?" The voice rose tremulously.

  "Ah…hmm, I-I mean---yes?"

  "I trust you have heard news of the latest hurricane? Well, it happened near St. Bartleby's, where your son goes to school, I believe. The hurricane hit the school and he is among the missing." The voice said, finishing up the last, terrible sentence quickly, "I'm very, very sorry."

  And the phone went dead.

  The phone clattered, raucously, as it hit the polished marble floor and lay there, dead, silent, shattered as the two leads on television embraced and Angeline sank to the floor.

  _Her-baby-was-GONE!!!_


	9. French Leave

Consternation

"Code Red! Code Red!" The truculent Howler's Peak guard squealed as it dashed through the monotonous greyness of the prison corridors pressing every Emergency siren as it went. The prisoners had escaped, just as it was his watch, _Why oh why did it have to be him? If the truth got out that he was napping on watch, he'd get sworn at within an inch of his life. The prisoners could not escape, Oh Frond, please, if he lost his job at Howler's it'd be back to mooning about at his mum's place again getting his cheeks pinched till they throbbed by his mother's Bridge Ladies. Anything, anything but that._

**LEP Headquarters**

LEP Headquarters was thronged with lobbyists protesting for better prison security systems, overrun by the press and absolutely swelling with curious Atlantean tourists with cameras slung round their necks and bits and pieces of half-eaten Spud's Spud Emporium Mystery meat Hamburger Specials. Holly was one of the Recon Officers temporarily taken off duty to act as the Council's PR men, walking briskly in the hall, wearing an ill-fitting LEP Consultant blazer, she wondered (for what must have been the thousandth time since she joined the LEP whether she _would _have done better on a nice, safe, boring traffic officer job, or as her mother suggested, a make-up counter girl). She felt stupid, this wasn't what she had wanted to be, the Council's spin-doctor, she had wanted to enforce justice, to ensure People's rights, to make both worlds, surface and subterranean, whole again, to be core diving, to be on another madcap, wildly exhilarating adventure with Artemis Fowl again. Then she glanced at the smoothly gilded clock face.

_Break time._

Holly sighed, not knowing if it were a sigh of relief or one of pure instinct, as she entered the jam-packed LEP cafeteria filled with green-clad officers milling about or sitting at tables making raucous conversation and bawdy jokes about the Council, the air was saturated with the awful musk of old oil and week old macaroni and cheese and greasy pizza.

_Really, if the Council members ate their lunches in this hovel, just like the rest of us commoners, perhaps they'd actually bother to get off their fat, lazy butts and get this place cleaned up, or better still, renovated like they promised to twenty years ago!_

Thinking this, she walked to her usual table where most of her more civil colleagues were sitting and highly engrossed in a copy of _The Subterranean Times._

"Hi! What're you all reading there?" She said by way of greeting as she sidled in beside Foaly who was just then inhaling his crate of carrots in beetle-juice.

"Hello, we thought you were still on spin-doctor duty" Grub replied. (He was as usual, skiving off his duty.

"No way. Now let me take a look at that, ever since the paper route changed, I haven't been getting my newspapers before they've been used as Mrs Next-Door's dog's chew-toy."

"Write a complaint." Trouble suggested as he handed her the newspapers.

"Wow, and I thought _Grub _was the complainer here."

"I highly suggest you take a good, fast look through the paper and prepare to die if you intend to continue on this vein."

"Ooh, I'm _sooo _scared, I might die before I finish reading the paper."

"Very, very, very tragic." Foaly added after he swallowed his mouthful of carrots.

"Speaking of tragic, did you hear how the Basaltville Baseballers were totally obliterated by the Atlanta Air-Fairies? Now _that's _tragic." Grub cut in.

"Where'd you hear that? I haven't heard anything of the match yet!" Holly inquired incredulously.

"That's most probably because your Sports section got all chewed up by Fluffy. It came out just this morning." Foaly said.

"Oh, I'll kill that dog first thing I get home!" Then Holly began flipping to the Sports section, but she never got there, on the second page was printed the headline:

**Mud boy Blown Away; Tornado sweeps through ****Ireland****, ****Demolishes****School**** and Disappears.**

**Fairy Suspected**

"Hey, what's this?" Holly and Foaly exclaimed at the same time, but they both already had an odd tingling in their bones that it was a certain Artemis Fowl who had been blown away.

They were right.

**Five hours later**

"Foaly? Foaly? Foaly!!! Come on, this isn't a coffee break, we're talking about life and death here. Hurry, hurry, HURRY!!!!!!!!!!!" Holly turned and shouted.

"Oh yeah, easy for you to say being light and floaty _and not carrying any of this luggage that's ALL-MOSTLY-YOURS!!!!!"_ Foaly, who was lagging behind her with a mountain of carrier bags stuffed with clothing, weapons and other things not politely mentionable in polite society, strapped to his back with Velcro bag straps (actually, these were hand-me-down 'family heirlooms' from one of Foaly's great great great great great great great… (we all know the drill) grand cousins's grandma's third nephews twice removed).

They were at the Haven airport and rushing to get to the ticket booths to boot two unfortunate holiday makers off the flight list to get to Ireland. It was Foaly's idea really, Holly (though acting as if you couldn't've paid her to be there) was raring to get off PR duty and into an adventure and so, they had dashed back to their homes to get what they needed as well as some equipment and two specially created holographic projectors to cast 3-D disguises of a very normal, very boring, very rich bright-eyed and bushy-tailed American tourists wandering around Ireland with no purpose at all but to see leprechauns and kiss Blarney's wall.

Life was getting good again. Very rushed, very scary, very sudden and very, very, very much worth living again.


	10. The Past Comes To Light

The Two Best Finder-Outers Ever

Fire, fire such fury like no other,

A Faerie's anger can be such,

More than even Hell's bowels may muster.****

So true this renowned piece of ancient verse tells as we all can see here. A reviewer has asked a very good question there, and I shall answer it as I had forgotten in the ninth chapter. (silly me!)

Now, no one _knew_ that Holly and Foaly had run off until Root, wanting to rub the news of two Howler's Peak convicts had escaped, bypassing the whiz-centaur's ultra-expensive-high-tech-This-Is-So-Much-Better-Than-That-Lying-Cheat-Of-A-Pixie's-security-system into Foaly's nose and found out that he was missing. And had left an extremely rude note that I shall now enclose:

_To: Whom It May Concern & has the intelligence to read._

_I am sick & tired of this job which offers no funding whatsoever, if you were to come upon this, I hope you shall sympathize with my being altogether too smart for this hole. Do excuse my leaving._

_If you'd like to be in contact with me when I'm back, do contact my mother, just don't ask how._

_Bye bye,_

_Insincerely Yours, _

_Foaly__.___

This is the complete and unabridged version of the mad centaur's note (do not ask me which grammar school he went to).

Well, Root yelled, (no prizes for guessing right) so loudly that he nearly caused another natural disaster and it led to great big tremors for a forty mile radius leaving all the pathetic Mud Men who were still reeling from the hurricane generously provided by Opal Koboi, quaking in their shoes. It also sent all the interns running to the tech room to see if someone was being, as a slightly ditzy pixie trainee with a face full of dwarf bum fat put it, "like, um, _totally massa-massa-killed _with a bread knife or something. Uh, uh, uh huh."

P.S. about how Holly and Foaly guessed whom it was who was blown away, that was just pure fairy intuition.

Well, actually, they guessed and then read the paper and got a major shock to see Angeline Fowl's face with smudgy mascara along with her disgruntled husband, Artemis-"no comment please"-Senior.

Now we can get on with my story.

We left off with Holly and Foaly rushing off to Ireland, St Bartleby's, at the Haven Airport, so let's get on with our yarn here.

**Flight SQ905684**

"Excuse me, Sir, your arm, move it left a bit please (_get your filthy hands away from me you bly witless bas of a half-breed hairy gnome!!!!)._" Holly turned to face the leering, bald-headed gnome decked out in a ghastly pizza-print Hawaiian shirt sitting next to her on the plane. _Really, why in Frond's name did they have to put her next to this odious individual anyway? Was it some kind of sick prank bored flight staff played on passengers?_

On the other side of the plane, Foaly wasn't having very much of a party either, he had been forced to sit next to a xenophobic Anti-Pagan, Dwarf-Mud Man mix-breed (don't ask me _how _it even happened) who was looking through Demon- dispelling manuals bought at the annual Fairy Fright-Night Fair on how to exorcise the Satanic Horse-Demon sitting right next to him.

"Mushroom, toadstool, Fairy Mugwort,

Protect Thyself with Magick Fort.

Dispell thy Demon by thy side,

Light come from where light may ride.

O! You demon, begone from thy sight,

Back, back, back to thy Night!"

The Dwarf screamed, making everyone look at him, then made big, ominous "Chomp, chomp" sounds at Foaly.

Foaly found himself staring, somewhat in awe at the Dwarf's huge granite-grey canines, and gulped. _Scary._ He vowed, right then and there, never to bump anyone off a flight again.

_"Landing in 23 minutes, 44.5 seconds."_ The Flight Announcer's voice boomed through the slightly tinny speakers, and all the passengers could hear two very loud, very long sighs of relief from either side of the plane.

**Ireland**

"Whew, what a relief to get off that absolute hell-hole, and away from that awful touchy-feely gnome. Urrrgh!" Holly half laughed, half groaned, walking out of the Stonehenge Airport, this time carrying her own luggage.

"Really? You actually bore with that guy next to you? I'm so disappointed in you, wish you had zapped him with your buzz-baton."

"Look Foaly, I've got more sense than to attack someone and set off another one off those awful Mud Man terrorist alerts. Anyway, I don't _have _my buzz-baton with me, at least not in my hand carry, remember?"

"Yeah, you've got a point there, anyway I had a pretty bad time on the plane too, you know, there was this guy there trying to 'demon-begone' me by sprinkling salt all over me. Bath salts, prissy Lavender too" Foaly said in disgust.

"I heard."

And with that began their 'Eye-popping Ireland' stint as tourists.

**Inquiry at St Bartleby's**

"Oh, um, Miss Tour Guide Lady?" Holly said, doing her best Jessica Simpson imitation, "I've got to go to the, uh, bathroom. May I?"

The tour guide gave her a weird look, "A bathroom?" letting just a hint of incredulity slip into her smooth, well-oiled voice, that was not a question she had expected to come up on the tour bus while passing the recently flattened St Bartleby's School. "Here? (and just smack right in the middle of NoWheresville?)."

But just then, they passed (oh my goodness!) a portable toilet! (well, actually, a hologram of a port-o-loo that had just sprung up from the grassy knoll seconds ago, thanks to the other cranky, whiny, weird and slightly mad bona-fide American tourist aboard the bus).

"There's a toilet! Knew we were near one!" Holly gushed and strapping on her Moonbelt under her extra long hippie tunic, hopped right off the bus, bouncing on the field, right out of sight.

"Now we gotta go! Don't wait up!" Foaly said, scrambling off (after having strapped on _his _Moonbelt) after her, leaving a bus full of tourists shaking their heads and clucking their tongues at "young people these days" as well as a very bewildered tour guide who became quite convinced that "after all [her] years as a tour guide", she was going quite mad.

"Well, we're here" said Holly, taking off her Moonbelt and looking around. "This is it."

"This nowhere. The building's been flattened like a pancake, and there's red tape flapping all over the place like ribbons in the field, but I really don't see anything." Foaly remarked in a very flat, dispirited voice.

Still, Holly continued tramping about and looking. She walked around, lifting each foot high above the muddy remains of what used to be the battleground for weekly wars between opposing football teams, and them setting it down again gently, careful not to get any dirt on herself. Then they walked up to what used to be the dormitory building, a huge pile of obliterated concrete and stone, still uncleared, lying over the building foundations.

There was something somewhat curious about the foundations really, it was a dark crater filled with a multitude of collapsed, rusted metal poles reminiscent of fallen pillars of a palace trapped within a decadent, bygone kingdom, beneath the crushed, mangled metal though, was a row of rotting but dried and mud-caked wooden beams that looked to have been buried, a secret for centuries, until it had been uncovered by the hurricane.

And within that tangle of age-old wood, there was a piece of paper fluttering in the faintly blowing wind, like the wing of a yellow and red butterfly.

As if drawn by some irresistible force, Holly jumped in, leading to a series of spluttering declarations from Foaly about how he doubted her sanity, then, he was silenced by a yell from below.

"Hey, here Foaly! Found something!"

"Really? What?"

"Come down."

"Wh-what?! Are you mad?"

"No, you are, not to want to see this."

"Couldn't you bring it up?"

"Gee, I never thought of that."

"You're not bringing it up?"

"No, duh."

"Fine, but if I die climbing down this horrible pit then you've got to explain to my mum then." So saying, Foaly made his way down to join her.

"So? What'sit?"

"This." And she held up a scrap of old-looking parchment to face the light. It was old, and time yellowed, with slightly brown spots where it must have gotten wet, and written upon it was, in a strange script in a fading crimson ink, like old blood:

_12th August 1445__ in thy Year of Our Lord_

_Strange tidings to-day, in thy morning, I chanced upon a queerly clad traveler, in clothings of a heavy, dark blue material cut in a most bizarre manner. With thy help of a passing peasant, I carried him back to thy cottage where he later awoke in thy after __noon__. When he did so, he was disoriented, befuddled and his memory much clouded, even now he does not seem to remember anything at all._

_Master, when he cameth back, was not surprised, nor was he angry in any way. I have a growing suspicion that he knoweth of what is afoot, but he will not say a word of thy matter. Well, the truth shall come out in its own time I suppose._

"Oh Gods, what do you think?"

_Twinparadox__: Sorry about the earlier inconvenience, an error occurred during uploading, so I've fixed it._


	11. Life is Every Day

Life is Every Day

It was evening, four months from whence Artemis had arrived so mysteriously, the sky outside was soaring, in a sense. The colours, like saffron strands, poppy blossoms, river water, and grassy fields, all the earthly elements projected upon the heavens like a universe blooming overhead in a great arch, were brilliant yet dark in the approaching evening.

Inside the cottage, the small, lonely one at the far end of the village, it was a quiet scene, odd but calming. Supper had been finished and cleared away (by the long-suffering alchemist's apprentice), the alchemist, Alaric, was sitting at the plain wooden table with a leather-bound alchemy text spread in front of him, teaching his apprentice, Edgar. Artemis, on the other hand, was standing alone at the window, wrapped in a thoughtful silence. Both parties were deeply absorbed in their separate tasks.

The alchemist and his apprentice were fingering through an ancient volume of an alchemy text written in an esoteric rhyme that even the best of them had trouble understanding. The former was sitting slumped over the table, wearing his usual scarlet robe, his rich autumn gold hued hair reflecting the yellow firelight. He was built rather along the lines of Edgar, only taller. The long, fine line of his nose, slender, rather pale oval of his face and depthless, brilliantly blue eyes, sometimes like multi-faceted gems brought from a faraway ruin of an ancient desert city, sometimes reflecting patches of a pacific empyrean, but always suppressing a hidden power, put to mind something Artemis had once seen, on a tapestry, or painting, or… somewhere, he couldn't quite recall.

Alaric was then quietly discussing the finer points of alchemy with Edgar, the web of finely drawn out illustrations and the delicate lattice-work of the writing dancing in the flickering firelight made the both of them rather dreamy and far less guarded. The alchemist was very unlike himself that evening, not the usual acid-edged, cryptic teacher he was when the sun was high in the sky, also, he was actually just _dishing _out the sacred knowledge for Edgar to take, not making him work for it. And Edgar, for a change, was far less cringing and trembling and terrified of his master than usual, in fact, he actually seemed to be genuinely happy to be near the tall, masterful prodigy who was most probably, though he never hinted at any such thing, less than ten years older than himself. The slightest hint of closeness never before seen between the two began to creep in.

"Edgar, thou hath talent." Alaric mused aloud, rather than saying to anyone in particular.

"Really?" Edgar said, a faint flicker of a grin flashed onto his usually passive face and disappearing like the palest star in the dawn.

"Yes, I should say so, thou learns fast and mayhap soon assist me in thy studies." Alaric replied, more seriously that time.

"Thou doth praise too much, I fear I am unworthy, just thy other day I broke thy pot and thou flogged me, hard." The apprentice said wryly.

"Ahh, I yet remember that." The alchemist gave his reply, his thin line of a lip curving into an amused smile, and continued, "I imagined thou should not want to remind me lest I should want to beat thou yet again."

So their conversation continued until Edgar raised another question on alchemy and then they went back to work.

On Artemis's end of the cottage, things couldn't have been more different, he was getting increasingly frustrated as each day passed with the horrible pair of suspicious do-gooders. Edgar was tolerable, alone, he would have given him all he needed to know on making gold (albeit by accident) in a heartbeat, but Alaric, was another story, he seemed to have eyes on the back of his head and perhaps even another pair which he had implanted into his brain. The alchemist could rival even Foaly in terms of paranoia, and intellect too, Artemis grudgingly thought. When he had offered to do some work and 'make himself useful' in a bid to get close to the giant shelf of books, Alaric had raised his eyebrows at him, thought awhile, and then delegated him to help 'poor widow Veritie take care of her children' and 'assist thy surgeon down thy road' as both were very poor and very busy and very much needed help, did he not agree, so why not go at once? Oh, _no, no _they _certainly _would not miss him, especially if he were absent for such a worthy cause. _Urrgh__, curse the fool._

Then he felt guilty again, it wasn't like his usual self to have a conscience, not even after he had met the fairies, but in the past months, something seemed to have changed in himself, maybe it was in the air, or perhaps in the well water. Artemis couldn't quite put a finger to it himself, maybe it was the 'purification' the alchemist went on about so frequently, or maybe it was the alchemist himself, silly as it was that anyone could possibly exert any such _positive_ influence on him.

_The past months_, Artemis decided to look through them again. The memories themselves were clear in his mind's eye where he could see everything from a spectator's point of view, like flipping through a book in a way:

He could see it just as it had happened, a week after he had arrived at the cottage, Alaric decided to give him some things to do just as he had asked.

_ "Never before have I heard anyone besides my apprentice ask for work, but there is much work to do in this village, hm, hm, hmm…" He was grinning as if he were harbouring some sort of secret notion, like he knew something Artemis didn't. "Hm, hm, hm…I could give thou much work to do." Then after a few minutes he clapped his hands, "Ah, thou could help thy widow, widow Veritie in thy village, yes she is in need of much help."_

__So he went, to the widow's house, or rather, hovel, he could still see it although he had given up trying to help out there after one awful day of squalling children, dirt encrusted floors and cooking dinner with a burnt out tea kettle:

_Although it was daytime outside, the house was dark, the stone walls were time worn and the dyed linen drapings were grubby, dull shades of aged red and yellow. The room was low-ceilinged and dingy with an oppressive air hanging about the place. The stove in one corner of the house was blackened and the inside was heaped high with the ashes of burnt wood the woman had not the time to clear away._

_ The widow was sitting at the far end of the house under a window, as if she were trying to absorb the sunlight within the darkness. She was cradling two young children, asleep, then._

_ Artemis stepped in, as quietly as he could, he walked towards the woman who was staying stock still in the darkness as if chained to the dim wall. As he got nearer, he saw that widow Veritie wasn't old as he imagined her to be, she was most probably not twenty-five even. Yet, her face (from what he could see of it), was lined with worry and grief, and her worn hands depicting her hard, sad life. Then she turned, seeing him, she said sharply, her voice full of suspicion, "Who is here? I know thou is here."_

_ He felt sorry for her then, who could possibly be so suspicious as to believe that every stranger meant her harm? And why?_

Well, he never got to know that, there wasn't any time for preliminaries once she realized he had come down to help, she started drabbling on and on and on about just how much she had to do and just how much he needed to help her. Artemis never really got down to helping her either though, he left after a day. He remembered the alchemist's face when he told him about it.

_"Well, I never believed that anyone would suffer the termagant's company and so I am not surprised." The alchemist remarked in his usual triumphant, knowing way. "In that case, why not thy surgeon's? He is by far more worthy than that insufferable woman!"_

_ Artemis was rather, well, _miffed_, to put it nicely, he had wanted an opportunity to look through the gold-making texts (he had not forgotten how there were no alchemy texts to be found by the third millennium, and he wanted to make the most use of his time), but there was nothing else to do then besides helping the 'poor, busy, tired surgeon' and hoping that he wasn't as bad as the doctors at St. Bartleby's. As Artemis found out in the week after, he wasn't, he was worse. On his first day as the surgeon's apprentice (read: slave), he had had to help the madman drill holes into supposedly 'mad' people's skulls to drive the evil spirits out, and returned to the cottage blood-drenched and bitten by a few _truly _mad patients and raring to quit (that is, until the alchemist brought up the matter of a short-staffed leper's colony)._

Artemis gazed out of the window, the sky was turning darker and darker as the sun retreated down the horizon and so was the conversation at the table at the other end of the room.

"Oh yes, I forgot to tell thou earlier, but in thy after noon, a traveler came through thy village on horseback," Edgar breathed deeply, then continued, "he brought news from London, _all with relation to any sort of magicks, sorcery and demonic forces will be eliminated on thy orders of thy Church!"_

"Really?" There was an audible gasp as Alaric inhaled sharply. "Are they suspicious of any in thy village then?"

"No, but thy villagers, _they _are thy ones who shall bring about our ruin." Came the answer.

Having heard this, Artemis turned and quickly joined them at the table, "If that is so, then what shall we do?"

"We all shall then have to leave, unless thou wishes not to follow…"

"I'm coming too."

Twinparadox----just a question, who do you guys like the best in the story?

(I like Foaly personally)


	12. Action!

Action!

**Back in the Lower Elements**

It was around 3.00a.m in the wee hours of the morning as Holly and Foaly's shuttle touched down at the Airport and they made it back to the LEP Headquarters, as soon as they arrived at the darkened, locked up building, Holly picked the lock open with one of her free 'Holiday in Paris' pencils from a previous above ground jaunts and then Foaly, from his laptop, disabled the building's security system so that they could make their way to his testing lab without setting off alarms.

You wonder why they didn't just come back during office hours? Well, you're in good company here, that's just what Holly asked, but as Foaly said, "Why would we want a great big yelling-at from Julius Root if we can get off the hook scott-free just by feeding him some story on tirelessly researching day and night so that we never came out of the lab? Trust me, I've tried it before."

Then the ever-sharp LEP elf replied, "Ah, _I_ see, **then what about that awful note you left at your desk when we ran off**?"

"Mmm," The centaur thought for a bit, tapping his chin with a finger. "that's a hard one, I suppose I'll tell him it's a joke and offer to resign then."

"Been there done that, you tried it Frond knows how many billion times already!"

"And it worked, so why not just get cracking now in case Root wants to yell at you?"

"Don't remind me. Okay, lets get this finished before I am."

"That's the spirit, now hand me the test kit over there, we'll test it's age to begin with."

An hour after, they managed to get the results, the buried parchment was over five hundred years old.

"So, any link, or just trash?" Holly leaned in for a good look at the paper.

"All right, gargantuan hurricane rises out of nowhere, school building flattened like a pancake, certain mud boy we know gets blown away and can't be found dead or alive, I'd say yes link."

"Is there any more we can find out from the parchment here?"

"I should think so, look at the writing."

"Ha, so you expect me to believe that Artemis Fowl here got blown back in time?"

"No, but there's this old fairy saying that nothing happens out of coincidence so…"

"We go back there, you're saying?"

"Yes, and besides this, at the time just before the hurricane, Opal Koboi and Mulch Diggums escaped from Howler's Peak." Foaly said.

"I know, there's this alert for all members of the police force if you don't know."

"Yeah, you know. Mulch I'm not so worried about, but Opal, she's the one, I mean, Artemis helped foil her plan and put her there. So now that she's out, she'll definitely want revenge."

"So what do we do?"

"Nothing, until she acts."

**200 Feet Below (day of the hurricane)**

Alright, we left off with Mulch's side of the story a pretty long while ago, and now we're going back. First things first is that he is not where you all saw him the last time any more because if so, he'd be dead, and I would have informed readers earlier (pretty simple, no? So lets get on with the story now.).

Mulch had tunneled a considerable distance away from Howlers Peak (leaving joy and bounty to the various farms he had tunneled under and one big building collapse in downtown London), in fact, he was right under Saint Bartleby's (a certain twitchy whisker led him there), and was preparing to climb up the back wall of the dormitory blocks to reach Artemis's room and then hide there to wait for him. But just as he was about to make his way up, he suddenly hear a strange, oddly metallic sound like the giant platinum blades he and his cousin had once made for Koboi Laboratories chopping up the air.

_It… it couldn't be…not that, but the hair, the hair, the hair was twitching… something very, very, very bad was happening… those blades, they could only be Koboi's, the mould used to make them was destroyed right after the blades were finished…this can't be true_

But it was, the renegade pixie was riding again.

He could hear it like anything, huge silver blades, _chop-chop-chop_, hacking through the winds, _slice, slice, slice_, a sword slicing up the air. Then, it came, like the swift uprooting of a great tree, the moaning of the ripping stone, the screaming of shattering glass, the howling of the churning gales, the unmistakable mechanical swishing and squeaking of metal knives turning upon their pivots.

Then, gone. It was over. Everything was over. He surfaced and saw nothing but pulverized stone, cut up pieces of grass still floating about like confetti after a party, the school children, staff and others all surfaced too as the winds had died, but there was no Artemis.

The whisper went through the crowd like a hushed wave of wind through silent pines, _no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis, no Artemis_, the voices sang.

No Artemis, no Artemis.

_Big-trouble, better-go-tell.___

_ Big-trouble, better-go-tell._

_ Big-trouble, better-go-tell._

_Tell someone, tell Holly, tell Foaly._

_ Go and get help. **Tell now.**_

Mulch went, quickly he did, so quickly.

**Holly's Apartment**

It had been a bad day, a terrible one to say the least. Foaly's prophecy came to life as the day unfolded, she had gotten yelled at for 'tirelessly researching day and night' as it "WASN"T HER JOB TO BE POKING HER NOSE INTO NON-RECON DUTIES". The centaur himself had just gotten off the hook scott-free, blast him.

It had been a terrible day, and it couldn't get any worse. Or so she thought.

Then, without any of the warning action movies usually dispensed, the walls gave way.

** "Ahhh!!!!! Oh God, I haven't even _finished_ paying for the bloody house, and now I'm going to be buried in it, in debt." **Holly screamed.

"Hey, I knew elves were skittish, but never to the point of screaming at the sight of little old me." Mulch, an odious creature in grey-washed prison regulation dungarees, climbed out of the hole in the wall and stepped into the wreck of a living-room.

"Mulch! If I weren't so glad to see you, you wouldn't be this cocky. Oh, and by the way, the next time, use the door."

"Can't, not in these, anyway, dwarves like me like to arrive in style. It's always terribly funny seeing people swear when their walls start collapsing."

"Don't tell me you've done it before this time. Also, you ought to be in jail now. Not in my house. You're a wanted criminal, now with another charge of jailbreak and housebreaking under your belt. So spill." Holly said, regaining her bearings a bit.

"Long story. It all started……."

It took the whole night before the story was finished, but by then, Holly was far too awake to feel tired and was drawing up plans (catch Opal Koboi before she made any more trouble was number one on the list, find Mud Boy was second in line) and convincing Foaly's ultra-protective, super-paranoid mum to let her talk to him, Mulch was busy flipping channels and looking through the TV guide for evil reality TV.

Finally, she got him on the phone and filled him in on Mulch's news.

"Oh, I guess that means going above ground again right?"

"Right."

"When's it going to be? It can't be tomorrow because my mother wants me to go look at old folk's holiday camps with her."

"_What?!"_ Holly yelled incredulously, "Rome burnt and your gran was playing the fiddle, I know, but now it's about to be hijacked by _your _arch enemy and you want to go look at oldie's holiday camps."

"Not me, my mum." Was all he said.

"Lose the holiday camp thing or lose your rep, if you're not coming, I'll tell everyone in the office that you live with your mummy."

"Alright, alright, fine! I'll go."

"Tomorrow. Get the stuff we took the last time ready and remember, Mulch is coming too, so that makes three. Bye!"


	13. Life is Started Anew

Thirteen

Hi all, I've finally got round to updating again! (at long last!) Missed me?" (no, right?") OK, my exams are finally over and I can get back to dreaming up nice, inconclusive stories, yay! Now let's get started:

"Do fairies exist?" It was for the first time that day that Artemis had said anything, and he seemed more to be talking to himself than anyone else. Their flight from the quiet village was at least a week past, but Artemis was still rather preoccupied by the very nearness of their capture. He could yet remember the horsemen racing through the village in the strangely mellow, primrose scented gloaming, them and the blazing gold torches they held aloft alongside the Cross; the Destroyer and the Saviour, side by side.

"Yes…and no. Why dost thou wish to know this?" The alchemist, who was walking in front replied, he had ears which could pick up the slightest whisper of a wind amongst his numerous other curious abilities.

"Oh, um… there is no reason but for my curiousity." Artemis was unceremoniously pulled from his silent reverie by the matter-of-fact reply that he had not even expected to come.

"Hmm," the alchemist mused for awhile, the scarlet-hooded back of his head not betraying the slightest hint of emotion. "Ah, curiousity is a dangerous thing—it could do thou a great deal of harm."

For a long while after, not one word passed between them.

They walked on, all three of them, over the autumn countryside as the distant hills inched past, it was Edgar's idea really, to _walk_ through the countryside to the nearest town where they could make their next move instead of joining the carnival that was packing up the day before they left like Artemis recommended, but Alaric, _brilliant _master of the universe wished to go along with Edgar's silly idea. Artemis was worn, tired, footsore and hoped desparately that the other two were by then regretting the error of their ways, unfortunately they were not, instead, they went all cheerful and preachy though Artemis, a top authority in Human Psychology amongst his many other qualifications, felt that it was an absolute impossibility to be _both_ jovial and sanctimoniously moralistic.

"I think I see something." Artemis said loudly though they were nowhere near any civilization at all (he often liked to play that sort of trick on his St Bartleby's Compulsory Camping/Character-Building Trips to drive all and sundry into a frenzy).

"_No thou dost **not.**" _A strained voice came from behind him—Edgar. Artemis smiled his usual cat-ate-the-canary smile as he turned around to look, the saint wasn't so saintly after all.

"Thou should not believe that we are so foolish as not to notice thou's intentions. Master tolerates thou out of goodwill, I do so out of obedience." And in an unusual venture into modern English, he hissed, "Now shut up."

Artemis scowled, it had been a good long time since anyone had both the nerve and stupidity to take such a tone to him (the last person was Holly and he had only borne it in an uncharacteristic show of tolerance out of friendship), but just as he was to make his usual stinging retort, Alaric turned around and said, "Up ahead, look carefully, dost thou see smoke rising from thy horizons?"

They both stopped arguing and peered out across the skyline, yes, there was smoke, a thin, greyish-blue haze lazily swirling up to reach the clouds like a faintly irridescent ribbon waving in the wind. "What dost thou suppose it is?" Artemis asked, he was getting used to the funny 'old-speak' pretty quick.

"There are no inns or farms anywhere near, it should be a campfire or suchlike if I am not mistaken," Edgar said, standing on tiptoes as if it would give him a clearer view, "hast thou a spyglass by any chance?"

"Spyglass?" Artemis blurted out, spyglasses hadn't even been invented!

"Ah, thou hast studied nothing in alchemy, I had forgotten. Spyglasses have been used by our kind of 'queer folk' since time immemorial," Alaric spoke up, eyes still fixed upon the horizon. "but thy Church dost not agree with our practice of herb and spell. Also, that reminds me, thou asked if the Fairy folk exist amongst Man, they do, and they are ever present amidst us, but thy Church disagrees with this too and talk of the occult is sure to bring destruction on us all. Speak no more of this at present."

As the evening darkness descended like a curtain of night, they finally came to the source of the smoke. It was all spread out in their path, extending till Artemis could see no more, a multitude of white tents with sable and crimson flags and embroidery to mark ownership was spread out over the field like a kingdom of nomads from a desert. In the middle of the wilderness of fluttering whiteness was a huge tent, it was vibrantly coloured, purple and scarlet like a richly festooned flower in the first snowfall of winter.

Artemis exploded despite of how the tent looked like something that would have inordinately interested him had it been for sale (it wasn't). "What a _wonderful _piece of luck we have now, and all because of your brilliant ideas! We are now trapped between what's likely to be a camp full of stupid mystic-haters and going back to thy village. What now?"

"Nothing, except to go on forward. We shall have to. So we will sneak through thy camp for it seems to be unguarded for thy present." The alchemist said nonchalantly, "Come."

Artemis groaned, rolled his eyes and followed after him when Edgar poked him in the back. The camp seemed to get bigger as it loomed forward, but Artemis could feel a faint sense of courage swell in him, maybe he _would _get out alive after all.

As they entered the camp silently, no one jumped out at them all of a sudden from one tent or another, the folds of white fluttering in the weak breeze of evening whispered nothing threatening, and Artemis could feel himself getting slightly less fearful, stupid plan or no. They walked on, their footfalls cautiously soft and light, _hush…hush…hush…_

Then came, out of the blue…… "**Halt!**" A shout came from near the large tent, and a sentry came running out toward them, sword in hand. "Halt at once! Thou is trespassing on thy camp of Her Majesty the Queen!"

"Oh dear, I think we have been caught." Alaric said drily, as both Edgar and Artemis gaped, open-mouthed in abject horror at the approaching guard.

"Dost thou think we should run?" The both of them asked the alchemist. 'No, I think not, if we were to run and be caught, punishment would be far greater than what we face now."

"We will die if we do not flee!" Hissed Artemis, looking around.

"Try, if thou wishes." came the answer as they were caught.

"Ouch…I do believe I have broken my knee." Spoke Artemis, he believed it was perverse to be worrying about broken knees at a time like that but with soldiers on guard over the entire surrounding area and absolutely no technical help or weaponry (they were

stripped of their belongings and thrown into what the twenty-first century police would have termed a 'holding room'-tent), even he was at a loss of what to do. "What shall we do?" questioned Edgar.

Then, just as if his question had reached their 'jailers', a sentry poked his head in and said, "Get up, Her Highness wishes to see thou at once." So all three of them got up and went out to the main tent (or rather, were pulled up and dragged there). Artemis could feel his heart in his mouth, partly from fear, but mostly from a morbid excitement at what was to happen next as they entered.

The inside of the tent was a picture of imperial splendour, tapestries which depicted scenes from hunts, battles and legends hung everywhere, exotic Persian carpets were spread over the floor and the ceiling, from which a huge chandelier, like a globe of light hung, was embroidered (it's a tent, remember?) with strands of silver and gold with an intricate map of the world. Every corner, every crevice told of the stately grace of monarchy.

"Hurry, Her Highness wishes to see thou immediately!" the sentry pushed them past a curtained doorway. "_This _way!"

As they entered, the guard dropped to his knees and motioned them to do so as well. "Your Highness, here are thy trespassers thou ordered to be brought in."

The queen was a tall, pale woman, with such a crystalline clearness of eye that it seemed as if she could miss nothing. She was quiet at first, scrutinizing each of them before she finally spoke, "Thou hast been caught trespassing, thou could be hanged for this offence."

Artemis could feel the hairs on his back prick up, and he raised his head to face her, but her face was an unreadable mask.

"_However,_ out of goodwill to all peoples under thy sky, I shall pardon thou, _but_ thou must serve me in return in whichever way thou is able…is that agreed upon between us?"

"Yes your Highness, thank you for your kindness your Highness." The three of them said, scarcely believing their luck in escaping death so narrowly.

"Then let us start with a few questions first, one, why were thou trespassing my camp?"

Barely a glance was exchanged between Artemis, the alchemist and Edgar before Artemis spoke, "We are mere countryfolk and know nothing of thy law, we saw no other way besides going through thy camp. We beg your Highness's pardon."

"Fine. Then in what way can thou serve?" The queen asked.

It was Artemis again who answered, "I am learned in thy use of herbs to cure maladies and thy two with me are skilled in…" in all the time he had known his companions, he was never quite sure in what they really did do besides mucking about with trying to turn metals into gold and other activities that the Church was against. Then Edgar cut in, "We are learned in thy science of astrology. We are able to read thy stars and decipher thy cosmos to foretell thy future."

"Very well. Thou shall prove useful to me." The queen said slowly, as if calculating something in her head over and over again (palace finances, what else?!). "Thou shall be given food, bed and raiment, and follow me on my journey. I trust that thou shall serve me well, if not…"

"Our thanks, your Highness, we shall do our utmost to be of service."

"Good. Thou may go. Thy maid will show thou thy tent where thou are to sleep and work." And with a wave of a hand, a maid stepped out, bowed, and ushered all three of them out.

As they walked out, Artemis looked at Edgar and asked, "Why astrology? Dost thou really know it?"

"Well, I do not. Neither dost master, but what can be done with astrology can also be done by our trade, that—and much more." Edgar shrugged and continued, "also, I _do _understand but a little of thy lore of thy stars, thou just hast to know how to look at them. Most things in our lives are but that way."

They walked together in silence until they came to an abrupt stop, "This is thy tent where thou are to sleep." The maid said, then, her eyes flickered up for awhile, and she added in a hushed whisper, "And _this _shall be thou's new life, live it carefully."

And then they were left alone, standing at the threshold of the near barren, white tent.

Please review! I'm dying for them--oh...oh... ...gasp------------silence, falls dead.


	14. Gone in How Many? Seconds

Gone in--How many?--Seconds

"Okay, so _now_ what do we do?" This was Holly speaking and she was _extremely _annoyed. They had been detained at customs (stupid, highly paranoid shuttle-port security gnomes), it was Mulch—or more accurately, his sixteen dozen jars of bug preserves. All three of them had been stopped at the barrier separating the two shuttle-port terminals because the idiot gnome thought they were carrying—as he _so _eloquently put it—'dangerous killin' poison' that they were going to use to take over all the known Mud Man world. This would not have been a problem at all if Mulch—stupid, belligerent, mulish, utterly mentally and physically stunted dwarf—had _not _insisted that he totally _needed _every blasted jar of insect jelly.

"Ask him," Foaly pointed a hairy finger at Mulch, "he's the one who caused the trouble, not me."

"Mulch," Holly bore down on the dwarf who was just then sitting on the 'Welcome" mat outside the airport (where the security gnomes had so unceremoniously dumped them when their colleague got tired of arguing), delicately digging out juicy chunks of dung beetle from one of his jars. "Now that you've got your bugs—_and _all of us stuck _without _a flight, you had better have a good idea too."

"Mmm hmm. My, my, that would take _quite _a bit of thinking," Mulch said with his mouth full, big, splashy drops of bug juice raining down on the velveteen matting around himself. "Now, if you would, _say_, get me can of Cockroach and Earthworm Heavenly Soil Delight, I _might _suggest something."

"MULCH!!!" Both Foaly and Holly yelled.

"Kerpoo!" Mulch spat out a blackish-brown blob of mashed insects in surprise. "Fine, fine, I give you an idea. Just _wait, wait _for the dwarf brilliance to work."

"Yeah, like it'll ever. Listen Mulch, for as long as I've lived, _I have never, never, never heard of 'dwarf brilliance', or of a brilliant dwarf for that matter._" Foaly leaned over and rapped Mulch's skull with his knuckles. "Listen, _I _have an idea."

"What?" Holly said, looking up from the shuttle-port map.

"Weeeellllll," Foaly cracked his knuckles and gazed upwards at the fluorescent-lit city sky.

"Go on." Holly prompted, and even Mulch glanced up in mild interest.

"Well, what _I _was thinking was that we could get Mulch here to, uumm, how can I say this, erm……well, crawlintotheshuttleengineandsmuggleallofusinwithhim."

"What did you say, didn't quite catch you." Mulch said.

Foaly took a deep breath, "Okay, I said, that _you _could crawl into the shuttle engine and smuggle all of us in with you."

"WHAT????!!!!!!!!!" This time Mulch heard him.

"That's really too dangerous Foaly, I'm sorry, but this time, I have to say Mulch is right." Holly shook her head.

"Yeah……then, what other way is there?"

For a long time, there was only silence from the three of them, sitting out on the shuttle-port doormat.

They were all eating ice-cream, still sitting on the doormat with their luggage all surrounding them like a small fort, formulating a plan to get above ground. They had been approached by quite a few Atlantean tourists offering to pay good money to take photographs with them ("My, my, are you young people here doing a demonstration of some sort?"), all of them had been scared off by the terrible grin that Mulch promptly gave them.

"Okay, so we're talking hijack now." Holly said, licking her strawberry fudge ice-cream.

"Uh huh." Mulch nodded. "What I think we should do is to masquerade as a good, wholesome, multi-specie family with a lifetime's supply of nut jam or something."

So they set about collecting the right clothes, they split up and made visits to the restroom, to steal clothes, or in Mulch's case, to the shops to 'borrow' garments. In an hour's time, they were all dressed up—Foaly as an elderly grandfather, Mulch as a venerable, jam crazy senile aunt and Holly as a long suffering filial daughter accompanying her elders on holiday.

"Uhm. Have a good holiday oldies!" the gnome called after them as they passed into the second terminal. From there they would board the shuttle.

"Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding." The flight announcer's voice called out. "Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. Announcing Flight Eighteen. Flight Eighteen, now boarding. All passengers to Paris please board Flight Eighteen. Have a lovely holiday!"

"Tell me again Holly, why are we going to so much trouble to go to Howler's Vale?" Asked Mulch.

"Well, Artemis--he's our friend…" Holy began reluctantly, there were so many reasons why so that it made saving Artemis's life so essential to her and her own, but they were so deeply buried in her that she couldn't quite point them out. She thought then, she thought very, very hard. Artemis, he was their friend, not just _their _friend but someone so impossibly special to the whole of the fairy world that his very existence was ingrained in every molecule of every thought, every atomic particle of every minute of every day, so much so that the world would never reconcile itself to being without him. And—and most of all, they were _his _friends. They loved him.

Holly wanted to open her mouth and say that. She wanted to open her mouth and say all that should have been said ages ago—when the Council was getting ready to mind-wipe him, to take him away—and what so painfully needed to be said. It was the truth—it was the truth and it would be forever—screaming down into the depths of infinity.

But first there was something else.

"I'll tell you why," Holly steeled herself. "Opal Koboi. We've got to save the world."

_'And Artemis, don't forget him.' _She added silently.

They were flying! Flying out at last!!! They had boarded the plane and headed off to Howler's Vale.

By the time they got off the shuttle, the dusky hues of evening were closing in on the mountain region. The shadows had crept out of the crevices where they hid in the daytime to acquire the night, the greyish-blue fabric of twilight swirled around the the great dome of the sky overhead. the crimson fluorescence of the dying sun glowed faintly through the organdy mists that had unraveled themselves from the clouds overhead, to sink to the earth. The mountains loomed like titans encircling the darkling horizon to greet Eos, goddess of the night. One by one, stars came out too, bright and glittering nymphs of the empyrean and sang their song of quiet and of sleep. The wonderful atmosphere of solace had heavily descended like a beauteous curtain of silence, and the nearness of the sky made the world a holy place again, from such a long, long time ago.

"It's truly ……undescribable." These were Holly's only words for it. Foaly and Mulch could only gaze in appreciative silence. This was where the adventure begun too, and after they had all gotten their fill of the night, they set up camp.

They pitched the tent and cooked dinner over a campfire—'Mud Man style' as Holly put it—then they went to sleep after planning the next day.

Holly stayed awake through the silence of the night, that day was the first time ever since Artemis's mind-wipe that she had fully realized what she had done to him, and with the closeness of Frond's spirit around her, she knew just how much guilt she would have to bear if anything happened to Artemis.


	15. Letters

Letters

Weeks had passed and the year was drifting off toward the shroud of mists that so often veiled the woodlands in the autumn of the year, each day, the sun fell like a leaf from the branches of clouds. Artemis was worried,—it wasn't often that he was worried, so when he was, it was all the _more_ worrying—not that he wasn't to begin with, he had begun to believe he would die there, mired years and years and years back in a strange place he didn't know anything about. The stars were the only thing he knew now, besides his two strange acquaintances, and so he took comfort in watching them, so far away, like white flowers blooming in the gloaming and still glinting, milk-white, into the hours of the dawn. He wondered if anyone would come to save him, Holly perhaps, if she knew _where _he was in the first place, he desperately hoped that someone would come and pull him, right across the space of years and years back to his home. But what if nobody came? Then he would die, wouldn't he? And then rise up into the sky, away from the earth to become a new star and a couple hundred years after, he would watch himself, and then his parents as they looked for him, and wept over an empty grave that should have been filled even before _they_ were born while his life was not yet over. In the day there was work, usually the curing of headaches and fevers and suchlike, or reading up on plants and their various medicinal properties, then at night—if he were free—he would venture outside and watch the stars and spot the constellations, it was reassuring, the distant orbs that never changed. Besides that, he also wrote letters by candle-light in his living-quarters when he was sure no one was awake, they were to no one, just things to leave behind, to make sure he would not be totally forgotten once he was dead. This night was no different.

It was around twelve midnight, Artemis had calculated from looking at how high the moon hung from the heavens, he shifted around under his coverlet and looked around—Edgar was the flat, still form on his left, Alaric was sleeping with his quilt heaped up on himself like a mountain—yes, it was safe. He silently got up, all the while making sure his sheets made not the slightest rustle and cat-tiptoed toward the table at the far side of the tent. When he was there, he lifted his shirt a bit and tugged a little book from a pocket he had sewn on the under-side of the fleecy layer of his pyjamas, it was a thick ream of parchment that he had siphoned off his workplace (at the rate of maybe two sheets a day, which was infuriating for a person who could once buy up the entire stock of his school bookstore without batting an eye-lid) and bound together with some string. The book was roughly the size of both his hands placed side by side, inside, it was filled with his scratchy handwriting (it was scratchy because the only sort of pen he could procure was a rather floppy goose feather quill from the cook who was plucking them), his letters to the future—_and _some SOS messages for Holly if she ever found it.

He also took a pot of ink from where he had stashed it in the midst of his room-mate's mess under the table, soundlessly drew up a chair and began to write.

_Dear future,_

_It's me again, Artemis. Every day, I'm hopelessly mired in work, I don't even know where I am. It's sad, I never expected life to end this way, I remember once when I was younger, Mother ever told me that bad people always got their just deserts, is this mine? Or is it just fate? Will I ever see my family again? Will I see the fairies again? Was it them who did this to me? I don't know. I'm trying not lose hope, but it's coming to autumn and the year is coming to an end, it's beautiful but each day that passes…I don't know. I think about my mother, I think about my father, but they're not here, they're not even dead, they're not born yet so as long as I stay here, I don't have parent—I don't belong to anyone. It's strange, to think I ever wanted to be free of anyone. I've taken the stars as family, .it's another thing mother told me when I was little, I never believed her though, that stars are the souls of dead people, I still don't believe it but it's nice._

_Also, another thing, will anyone save me? (I don't generally use colloquialism, but here goes,) A BIG SHOUT-OUT TO HOLLY AND GANG THERE, "COME SAVE ARTEMIS!!!" Okay, I really want to be saved._

_It's the dead of the night now, so quiet I can hear the shadows and the night rushing past me, chasing the shadow of the day. I wonder at times like these, why people call the night velvet, it's not, it's not a quilt the angels have pulled over the earth and cut holes in for the stars either. It's a great expanse of nothing, an infinite eternity of space and right out there, there are lamps burning white, or pearls cast out, each drawn from a broken string and flung to the impossible depths of the universe. I don't know why people call the night velvet, if it were I would choke and die—I would. Oh dear, I don't remember when I started believing such things, I'm that lonely I suppose._

_Uh oh, someone's coming._

Artemis clapped the book shut and gingerly tucked it into his pocket just as a hand clapped his shoulder from behind. Although Artemis had already heard the footsteps, he still gave a little gasp (more of outrage though, _in all his life…such blatantfamiliarity_). Then the voice spoke. Edgar. Artemis groaned inwardly, he would definitely want to know what he was doing (of course, it could be worse, like the servant girl who _always _got the giggles whenever he came within a ten metre radius of her).

"What art is thou doing?"

"Nothing." Artemis turned around and stared into the blackness where he knew the voice was coming from.

"Hmm."

Silence.

"What in he—on earth art _thou _doing?" Artemis hissed, he was annoyed, _why,__ there was no peace to be gotten anywhere!_

"Well, I could not sleep, so when I saw thou I was wondering…"

"Wondering _what?"_

"What thou was about, and thou saith nothing so there _is _nothing. Also, I was pondering that day thou joined us, it was unusual."

"Unusual in what way?" Artemis could feel his heart beat faster. "Unusual in what way?"

"If I remember correctly," Edgar paused and sighed. "If I remember correctly, thou was found lying on thy road, in a queer manner of raiment. I always wondered about that."

"Is there anything more?"

"I _am _coming to it." He turned slightly to face the slit where the two cloth flaps covering the tent's entrance did not quite meet and in the faint silver of the weak moonlight, Artemis could see the silhouette of his mouth as he began to speak again. "Well, thy circumstances of thou's appearance were odd. I spoke to some of thy villagers in thy days after, not one of them said they saw anyone besides thy one traveler who helped bring thou back to thy cottage come into thy village by that road on which thou was found."

Artemis could feel the hairs on his back prickling, _what had sent him back, and who?_

"What else happened?"

"All this."

Artemis leaned back and shut his eyes, was that blame he was hearing? _Oh no, dumb idiocy of these medieval quacks rubbing off on me… "Artemis, I want you to know that bad people get their just deserts."_

He spoke, "I'm sorry."

"What for?"

"All that has happened, I was hateful."

"No matter. Never blamed you…look, it is a wonderfully clear night."

And they lapsed into silence.

**Opal Koboi's side of the view**

Now that the boy is out of the picture, _I _can finally take _my _place in the drama. This is what I've wanted all along, I want my place, I want to _win_. The world is mine, it always was, so now I'm here to take it. _So why a whirlwind?_ That's your question, it's because this is a drama. I've always believed in announcing myself at the door, I don't go creeping and crawling about like a thief—I _own _this world; it's mine and _nobody_ can do anything about it.

So my plan, what is my plan? I've got it, all in my head, another thing I don't believe in is improvisation. Only pathetic elves and centaurs and Mud Men and dwarves do that; they don't know that it means only short-sightedness. It's foolishness. It's what _they _do. Me? Well, I'm different. I have sent my calling card, and now, I wait. When they come, I strike.

It's easy, I don't have to worry about a thing.

**Artemis's POV**

I actually said sorry! I apologized. Oh gods, will wonders never cease, but I guess I'm pretty glad about that, I've got someone to talk to now, maybe we'll even get to like each other. Hmm. Another thing I'm wondering right now is why I got thrown back through all these centuries……a rupture……a hole in time, yes, I understand. But who made it? That's a mystery, a real one, I wonder why. I'd list out the reasons but I can't think, I can't think why anyone would possibly do this. _Why?_

So I'm lying in the darkness, it's still the nighttime and I'm waiting, eyes open, for the dawn.

**twinparadox** It's December 26, 2004 and school's starting in just _days!_ I know, I know, it's awful, I'm M-A-D mad. Why, oh, why do I have to go to school? Never mind, I'll try to update as often as possible.

P.S. Wish me sooomuch luck for school, I'll need it.


End file.
